Page 8 of Infamous
The door slams shut, metal on metal, final and cold. The sound reverberates through the hollow of my chest until it feels like it’s my heart that’s bolted shut, my life that’s sealed away.
And I know with a clarity so sharp it slices me open - this was the last time I’ll ever see him.
And I know this isn’t just the end of us.
It’s the execution of everything we ever were.
5
LUCIAN
The guards flank me, steering me down the corridor. Chains rattle with every step, iron biting into my skin, but none of it registers. The only sound that matters is the silence - her silence. The silence of her sobs muffled through the glass. The silence of everything I didn’t say but should have.
I used to believe vengeance was all I was. The hunt. The kill. The silence after. That was my pulse, my purpose, my proof of life.
But Nadia ruined that. She ruined me. She gave me a heartbeat where there should’ve been none. She tethered me to a future I never believed I’d deserve. For one impossible moment, she made me believe I could be more than blood.
And then I did what I always do. I destroyed it. I killed that too.
Because one day, she’ll belong to someone else. Some man who doesn’t wear chains on his wrists. Some man who can walk her into the daylight without shadows snapping at their heels. He’ll hold her at night, listen to her laugh, learn her scars, and kiss the places I made sacred. He’ll get the softness of her in themornings, the sunlight on her face when she wakes, the life we were supposed to build together.
And that thought kills me more than these chains ever could. Because in my head, in my blood, she’s mine. Always was. Always will be. But loving her means letting her go.
So I bury it. I bury us. I let the silence settle over me like dirt shoveled onto a coffin. The grave’s already dug, and I’m lying in it, sealed off from her warmth. What’s left of me is what the world named:Ghost.Their myth. Their monster.
This is for the best. That’s what I keep telling myself. She needs to build a life untouched by me—far away from the spotlight, away from the headlines, away from the curse of my name.
Finally, the door to my cell groans open. The guards shove me inside, and then I’m alone.
I stumble to the cot and sit, elbows on my knees, head in my hands. My chest heaves like I’ve been gutted, like all the air’s been stolen from the world. I grit my teeth until my jaw aches, but it doesn’t stop the sound tearing out of me. A low, broken thing that doesn’t belong in a human throat.
Nadia’s face haunts the dark, seared into the back of my eyelids. Her tears on the glass. Her scream -You’ve already killed me!- echoing until it shreds me raw.
I press my fists to my temples, hard enough I think I might crack my own skull, but the memories don’t stop. Her touch, her laugh, the way she used to look at me like I was worth saving. All of it burns through me, crueler than chains and bars and my forever prison.
And then I break.
The sob rips free, savage and unrelenting, pulling my whole body down with it. I drop to my knees on the concrete floor, palms flat, forehead pressed to the cold stone as if it can cool the fire chewing me alive. My shoulders shake with it, my chest collapsing again and again.
I’ve taken lives without flinching. But this - losing her - this is the only kill I can’t walk away from. Because it isn’t just the end of us. It’s the end of me. And I’ll die in this cage with nothing but her broken voice in my skull, her ghost stitched into my veins, until the silence finally swallows me whole.
I’ll never touch her again. Never feel her body fold into mine, soft where the world is jagged. I’ll never again taste the breathy sound she makes when she whispers my name like a prayer meant for my ears only. Memory is crueler than any sentence they could hand down.
I told her this was the last time. And for once in my goddamn life, I meant it. I had to. Because she needs to forget me — the man, the monster, the headline — and go on living. She deserves a world that doesn’t read like blood and violence. A life that isn’t waiting for the echo of sirens to stop.
But that world doesn’t have a place for me anymore.
They told me today. My lawyer, eyes hollow, voice careful - the DA is seeking the death penalty. He said it like it was inevitable. Like the verdict had already been carved into my tombstone. They’d consider life instead, he said —ifI give them what they want. The locations. The bodies. But I can’t give them what doesn’t exist. I didn’t kill those girls. Not the ones they’re accusing me of killing, anyway.
Sure, they found my DNA at one site, on a burnt corpse in the woods, far removed from anything that even resembles humanity. But that’s all they had. That one piece of evidence, that one damned accident of proximity.
It was enough. Enough to make me the monster they wanted. Now, every body buried in that forest belongs to me in the papers. Every missing girl, every ghost without a grave. They’ve built an empire of horror out of my name - and the public eats it up like it’s a soap opera and they can’t wait for the next episode. They don’t know whether to love me or hate me,but the world just can’t get enough of Lucian Cross, otherwise known as the serial killer, Ghost.
The gorgeous killer. That’s what they call me now. I even have a fan club. Women writing me letters scented with perfume and delusion, swearing I was with them when one of the murders happened. Trying to build alibis out of fantasies. Every single one of them lying through their teeth.
Their need tobelievein me sealed my fate. Their mercy became my death warrant. And that’s the cruelest part. Knowing that I’m already dead — long before the state ever lays a hand on me.
THE PAST
